Tennis Shoes (3 page)

It must have been mumps because about a fortnight later lumps came up under Nicky's ears. Although they hurt she did not say anything about them at first, because it was the last day of Jim's holidays and they were motoring out into the country for a picnic. She was very cross at the picnic and felt so awful all over that in the end she told Pinny about the lumps. Pinny told Dr. Heath, who felt them and said: ‘That little wretch in the train! Bang goes half a term's school fees.'

In the end they all had it. Not together, which would have been bearable, but one by one. Nicky was getting up when David's neck first got stiff. Jim was feeling too miserable to speak when Nicky and David felt well enough to fight noisily. Susan could not swallow at the moment when a patient of their father's sent them peaches, so that the other three, who could eat perfectly, had hers as well as their own. In fact, an annoying illness calculated to make things like tennis houses go out of any one's mind.

Nobody went back to school until the half-term. It rained a great deal and they got very cross. Then, just when they were at their angriest with everybody and each other Dr. Heath remembered the tennis house, and Annie took a share in making them well.

Of course it was not the weather to play tennis even if they had a court, and they could not join a club because Susan was still infectious. Then suddenly, one drizzly afternoon, Dr. Heath said:

‘We'll get a table-tennis set. Very good for teaching you to keep your eye on the ball, and it will be something to do.'

Opening the tennis house was quite a ceremony. The children half hoped some more money might have got in while they had been ill, but it had not. One by one they put their heads flat upon the table (except Susan, whose neck still would not bend properly) and saw the four pounds lying in the hall. Dr. Heath took one. They thought the three left looked a lot of money.

Of course, as they were infectious, the children were not allowed to go into the shops, but their father left them outside while he went to the sports department. Jim wanted to bring a bell with them, and, while the car was standing still, ring it and say: ‘Unclean! Unclean!' like the lepers used to do, but he was not allowed to.

Dr. Heath bought a table-tennis set. They opened the parcel in the car and decided the money had been well spent. They drove home round by Piccadilly Circus, which was out of their way but cheering after mumps. Altogether it was a very good morning.

They were not allowed to play much tennis at first because of after-effects of mumps, but they played a bit and, though they were not much good, it made something to do. Because they were only allowed to play a little they did not get tired of it as they had of ‘rummy' and things like that, so not being allowed to play much had its advantages.

Annie had been marvellous all the time they were ill. She had once had mumps and knew the not-swallowing stage, and she had been a great help at getting things down. Each day she had a different joke. The mere sound of her ‘Whoop, whoop, coming over' outside the door made life less depressing. The jokes were not terribly funny really, but when it is milky stuff in a cup which, apart from being nasty, hurts to swallow, anything which takes your mind off it seems grand. Sometimes she dressed up. Sometimes she danced a breakdown while they drank. Sometimes she sang funny songs. On the days they were worst she did clown tricks. She came in very stuck out behind and then suddenly went flat. Another time she wore an old hat and a little stream of water came out of the top of it. They tried to make her tell how she worked the tricks, but she said:

‘No. We've measles, chicken-pox, and scarlet fever to have yet. We'll keep 'em for those.'

One day, when it was too wet and cold to go out, when they had played all the table tennis they were allowed to, when every other game anybody suggested they knew they would hate, Annie put her head round the door.

‘My! You look like freaks in a show. Get taken on anywhere as the longest faces in England. Why don't you play something?'

‘We mayn't play any more table tennis,' Susan explained, ‘because of our glands.'

‘Well, what about us making toffee?' Annie suggested.

There was a tremendous rush at this. Toffee-making is, of course, always a nice thing to do, but with Annie it was especially fun. She would pull out long strands of toffee before it had quite set and explain with it how trapeze acts were done. She had a sneaking hope that perhaps she might talk one of them into taking up circus work as a career. To-day, as they were feeling miserable, she was especially talkative.

‘There's nothin' like the circus,' she said, heaving a spoonful of toffee over. ‘You should see us in the early morning moving on. The smell of the breakfast cooking. The sounds of the men loading. The steam being got up on the old trailer.'

‘And I suppose a lot of animal noises?' Jim took a little bit of toffee off the spoon and licked his finger. ‘Growls from lions, and things like that?'

Annie stopped stirring and looked at him very scornfully.

‘Lions! Your ignorance, Jim! There aren't no lions nor no tigers in a circus! “Cats,” that's what we call 'em.'

Susan pulled her arm.

‘Did they have “cats” down below while you were doing your act?'

Annie went back to her stirring.

‘I never travelled with “cats,” not above once. The last turn, they are, on account of fixing the cage and that. Maybe I'd be doing me act when they were being set. What'd I care up in the air?'

David looked into the saucepan to see how the toffee was doing.

‘By grabitation you might fall.'

‘Grab nothing,' said Annie, who did not even know the word pronounced properly. ‘Fall, indeed! Why, I could hang upside-down a week and never drop.'

Nicky stood on one leg and hopped round the kitchen table on the other.

‘But you couldn't now?'

‘Bet I could. Not a week, because of me work. But upside-down never did mean anything to me nor never will.' She passed the spoon she was using to Susan. ‘You keep that goin'. Now wait a minute while I find a bit of elastic.'

Nicky stopped hopping.

‘We've no elastic strong enough to hold you.'

‘Hold me!' Annie sniffed scornfully. ‘What's the matter with me feet holding me?' She found a length of elastic in a cup on the dresser. ‘Here we are.'

Susan looked round from her stirring.

‘If it's not to hold you up, what do you want elastic for?'

‘Me skirts.' Annie tied the elastic round the bottom of her skirts. ‘Used to do a double somersault in our act. Pink tarlatan and fleshings I wore. Used to keep an elastic round me waist and push it down. Looked better, dad always said.' She went over to the door, put a chair against it, stood on her hands, and hung on to the top of the door by her feet. ‘Take away the chair, Jim.' She grinned at them. ‘This is where rightly there ought to be a roll on the drums.'

Annie had to come down again because of the toffee; but they saw she had spoken the truth and really did not mind which way up she was.

David examined the door.

‘It looks as though us could do that.'

Annie laughed, and poured the toffee into a tin.

‘So you could, too, and a lot more besides.'

Susan sat on the table.

‘Could we? Would you teach us?'

‘I would that. Bit of patter dancing too, you might learn. Not to mention juggling with three balls. Maybe that's where we better start. The other two might be rough on your glands.'

Juggling was where they started. They did not begin with three balls, of course, but with one. Annie said she had learnt a lot of juggling along of some cousins who were in the business. Her father had told Annie to learn all she could of it, as it was a fine training for the eye.

‘And I should think it was.' Annie caught the balls nimbly as she talked. ‘I'd go over to them for a bit of dinner on a Sunday, and sudden he'd say: “Comin' over!” and before you knew where you was there'd be ten or twelve plates skimming at you.'

‘Didn't you ever break any?' asked Susan. She sighed enviously, thinking how much more amusing meals would be eaten like that.

‘No. They wouldn't break. Tin they was. Lost a front tooth, though, I did. Dad said he was glad of it. It would be a lesson to me not to take me eye off what I was doin'.'

Annie's dad's views about the necessity of having your eye fixed on what you were doing were deeply embedded in Annie. The children found learning to juggle with a ball was fun, but sometimes it was more like lessons. Annie, bred to the circus, had spent her childhood at practice and yet more practice, and expected the children to do the same. She had them in a row in front of her in the afternoon and was very severe if they had not improved since the day before.

‘Now, Jim, a couple of hours in the big top wouldn't hurt you in the morning. That's the sixth time you've dropped that ball.

‘If you want to play marbles on the floor, David, no need to do it in my kitchen. This is jugglin' what's goin' on here.

‘That's better, Susan. No need to frown at it like that, though. A smile won't hurt you.

‘All right, Nicky, we all know you can do it. But I seen many a good artist crash because it seemed to come natural. Nothin' don't come natural. You may 'ave the gift, but there ain't nothin' but knowin' your job what stands behind you.'

When their health got better she added to her lesson a few steps in patter dancing. All the children were clumsy at this, but they liked doing it. They had to be stopped practising when the patients were about, the tapping made such a noise.

The day before Jim went back to school Annie hung each of them upside-down on the door. They came down very red in the face, not really having liked it much, but of course nobody said so.

What with table tennis, juggling, patter dancing, and hanging upside-down, as well as all the usual Christmas things, including going to Olympia with Annie and meeting a clown whom she knew, nobody thought about the tennis house in the Christmas holidays.

It was in the Easter holidays that the twins had their letter from grandfather:

M
Y DEAR
T
WINS
,

Looking round the shops for something for your tenth birthdays, which, unless I am much mistaken, will soon be here, I remembered the tennis house. How is it doing? I hope you are all practising hard and putting in plenty of pennies. I enclose a pound to help.

Your affectionate

G
RANDFATHER
.

PS. Please tell David I am glad he liked the trucks for his train. Tell him now he is five I shall expect a letter written by himself. I am glad he had a nice birthday.

Jim and Susan opened this letter between them. When letters came addressed to them both they opened them fairly. Susan slit one side of the envelope flap and Jim the other. Susan took the letter out. Jim straightened it. Susan read the first line, Jim the second, and so on down to the end. They had read joint letters like that ever since they could read at all, so they did it now without thinking. They read the letter out loud and everybody looked ashamed except David, who was annoyed by the postscript.

‘I can write,' he said angrily. ‘But I s'pose a gennelman can keep a sectary for his corspondant.'

Nobody paid any attention to him. They were all thinking how mean they had been about the house. Five pounds in all for it, and every penny provided by grandfather. Nothing even done about learning tennis except practice at the table sort.

Susan looked worried.

‘Poor grandfather! What a shame! If Jim and I get birthday money we'll put some in. Won't we, Jim?'

Jim nodded.

‘Everything that's over from my cricket pads.'

Pinny looked up.

‘I shall see what I can do.'

‘Oh, no, you mustn't, Pinny,' Mrs. Heath objected.

‘Why on earth should you?'

‘Ah, well.' Pinny smiled at them all. ‘Many hands make light work, you know.'

Dr. Heath got up.

‘So they do, Pinny, bless you. But much more important than the money is the tennis practice. We've been slacking. I shall put that right to-day. Who'd like to come with me to Nobby's after lunch?' He knew the answer before he asked the question. All the children liked going to Nobby's.

Nobby Clark was a carpenter. Nobody called him Mr. Clark, or Mr. Charles Clark, which was his full name. Everybody just called him Nobby. Once, years before, Dr. Heath had pulled him through pneumonia. He was really very grateful for being kept alive when he might have been dead, but he had an odd way of showing it. He was not a man who looked grateful very easily.

Nobby did his carpentering in a shed at the back of his house. He must have cleaned the shed sometimes or the shavings would have been up to the roof, but it never looked as though he did. There were the most useful things to be had on the floor for the picking up. Decent blocks of wood that Jim, who was clever with his penknife, could make into things. Shavings of all sorts that if taken home carefully and painted, made grand bracelets and necklaces for savages on desert islands and ladies going to Court. Sometimes there were things that had been cut off furniture, which, although it was difficult to know just how they would come in, were worth taking home in case. The foot of a chair with a castor on it; a bit of a door; odd pieces that had carving on them. All the time the children were in his shed Nobby kept up a continual grumble:

‘Put that down. Let that be.'

They paid no attention to him whatsoever because they knew he could not want the things they took or he would not let them take them out of the shed. Sometimes he did stop them. Jim once found a most beautiful round bit of wood, shaped like a log. He had seen an interesting bit of carving someone had made out of a piece of root, using its natural bumps and bits to turn it into a frog and a sort of gnome. He had thought that he might do the same thing with this bit as it had a bump on one side. Nobby, however, took it from him just as he was leaving.